There is a great deal of debate – and unfortunately a great deal of confusion – about the role of NUMSA’s United Front (UF) which will hold its national launch on 14 December, one year after its creation was agreed upon at NUMSA’s December 2013 Special National Congress. However in the intervening year it has become apparent that there may be important differences between the leadership and the rank-and-file and possibly within the leadership itself over conceptions of the role of the UF in the working class struggle.
On the one hand it is understood to be an integral part of the process towards the foundation of a mass workers party, a process NUMSA has repeatedly committed itself to and that NUMSA general secretary Irvin Jim has recently reaffirmed, at least, as his own position. But head of the United Front, Comrade Dinga Sikwebu, sees it as limited to uniting organisations “against socio-economic problems” and not necessarily connected to the creation of a party. In a recent interview with Business Day (04/11/2014), Comrade Dinga said of the UF that “we are not building something that will dictate the policies of the government”. If the UF is not intended to dictate the policies of the government, what is the purpose of the struggles it will be leading? He then went on to suggest that struggle and electoral politics are divided by an iron curtain. WASP has always pointed out this approach is schematic and will not take the movement forward.
Elections are an arena of struggle, rarely the most important, but one that can nevertheless be utilised as a platform to express the general interests of the working class struggles taking place in the workplaces, the communities and the education institutions. But Comrade Dinga has even cast doubt on whether NUMSA will mount an electoral challenge in the 2016 local elections expressing fears that a workers party could be swallowed by bourgeois parliamentarism. In WASP’s experience, the majority of NUMSA shop stewards and rank-and-file members taking part in setting up UF structures take contesting the 2016 polls as the goal of their endeavors for granted.
The articles published below explore some of the theoretical and conceptual problems with the way the NUMSA leadership has presented the UF which have contributed towards the present confusion and conflicting interpretations of its role. But despite our reservations about the leadership’s understanding of the role of the UF and the approach to the building of a mass workers party, WASP is fully participating in the building of the UF.
The first article first appeared in the Oct-Dec 2014 issue of Izwi Labasebenzi, written by the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM – www.socialistsouthafrica.co.za) for use as WASP’s official paper. It deals primarily with the proposal that the role of the UF is to fight for the implementation of the Freedom Charter.
The second article was written by the DSM in early September 2014 before the NUMSA leadership reaffirmed the role of the Freedom Charter in the UF, but was not published at the time. It deals with the historical inspiration the NUMSA leadership has drawn on to explain their understanding of the role of the UF and its connection, or lack of, to the creation of a mass workers party. It also deals with the lessons of the United Democratic Front in South Africa in the 1980s.
These two articles by no means exhaust all the issues connected to the UF nor the historic task of the creation of a mass workers party. Future material will be produced to deal with aspects not touched upon here.
Asijiki! Forward to Mass Workers Party on a Socialist Programme
The most significant political aftershock of the Marikana massacre was undoubtedly the historic December 2013 Special National Congress (SNC) of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) – Africa’s largest trade union. It resolved to withdraw support from the ANC – which Marikana affirmed most emphatically as a party of capital – setting in motion a process that could lead to the foundation of a workers party. These resolutions were to be implemented by establishing a United Front (UF) to engage working class communities and a Movement for Socialism (MfS) to bring together left political formations. NUMSA’s locals have now been mandated to establish Political Discussion Forums to assemble the forces for the formation of the UF with working class community organisations and left political organisations.
Until now, the Achilles Heel of the implementation of the SNC resolutions has been the absence of a socialist programme as a foundation for the UF. This fact had cast doubt on whether the MfS or the UF were in fact preparatory steps towards a workers party. Suggestions that the SNC resolutions committed NUMSA to no more than “exploring the possibility” of establishing a workers party, reinforced this.
However, since then, the call “Asijiki!” with which NUMSA President Comrade Chirwa opened his address to the NUMSA International Symposium in August, reflects the firm view within the NUMSA rank-and-file that there is no turning back from a workers party.
This has been followed by the NUMSA leadership’s proposal that the emergent UF should debate the Freedom Charter as a programme. We believe this to be an important step forward in spite of the fact that the Charter is not a socialist programme. The debate on the Charter has the potential to provide much needed clarity on the main strategic objective of the setting up of the MfS and the UF; that it is not an end in itself but aimed at the formation of a workers party.
Leaving a vacuum
By not taking a firm position on the 2014 elections, NUMSA had left many workers doubtful about its commitment to breaking with the ANC. Some NUMSA leaders even insisted that the SNC resolutions withdrawing political and financial support from the ANC could not be interpreted as a call not to vote ANC.
Yet, the SNC had decided that any party NUMSA supported would have to be: (1) socialist, (2) based on the working class, (3) democratic and, (4) have a track record of struggle. This pointed to the possibility of support for the Workers and Socialist Party (WASP), whose programme is compatible with these criteria. But the failure to give any guidance left a vacuum on the left partially filled by the EFF – a party NUMSA recognises as not genuinely socialist.
The NUMSA leadership seemed to be attempting to determine the rhythm of the historical process. As we warned in January, “it is one thing to seize the moment in an organic struggle as the founders of WASP did in the course of the mineworkers’ strikes of 2012, and another to try and lay down a schedule for the class struggle.” The old lady of history determines her own rhythm, however. In the absence of a genuine socialist alternative, over a million turned to the EFF and another million to the capitalist DA voting tactically to punish the ANC.
At the same time, NUMSA’s opponents have attempted to take advantage of the apparent hesitation. The Metal and Allied Workers Union of SA (MAWUSA)’s formation and the assassination of three NUMSA shop stewards in KwaZulu-Natal, is a conscious attempt to destabilise NUMSA, intimidate and divide workers and sabotage the workers party and socialism.
Rhythm of struggle
We believe the debate on the programme must become the main priority alongside the mobilisation of the forces for the UF. Of course, the mere adoption of a programme does not in and of itself place the working class in a position to rise to the historical challenge. A political party is in essence a programme. Political programmes represent the interests of a class or sections of classes. The party is the organisational apparatus for assembling the forces to campaign for its programme. For the working class, the critical challenge is to ensure the programme expresses its class interests.
The absence of a clear socialist programme has sealed the fate of many a liberation movement, workers, socialist, communist, social democratic and labour party through the world. The restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union set in train an ideological retreat that led to the obliteration of the last remaining vestiges of socialism in their programmes, and either their conversion into openly pro-capitalist forces, or complete disintegration as was the case with the Movement for Multiparty Democracy in Zambia and the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe, both of which arose out of the trade unions.
NUMSA’s Freedom Charter proposal could not be timelier. Since the 2014 elections, the ANC’s worst victory, the ruling party has been plunged it into an even deeper crisis. The dark clouds threatening the presidency and the e-toll conflict between the Gauteng provincial and national governments is but the clearest of the fault lines dividing the ANC. The elections revealed the how much deeper the vacuum to the ANC’s left has become. The 14.3 million who stayed away would have had the option of a workers party with a genuine socialist programme confronting the ANC with a more formidable socialist opposition
At the same time it is not automatic that a new workers party will win the allegiance of the majority of the working class immediately. As Trotsky explains in The Class, the Party and the Leadership, “The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions. Precisely for this reason the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution. But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilising the collapse of the old leading party.”
The ANC lost over 200,000 votes but it still received 11.4 million. The EFF vote may have been substantial for a first time contender. Yet, despite being born in far more favourable circumstances than the Congress of the People five years earlier, it failed to better COPE’s vote.
This is also illustrated by NUMSA’s Section 77 strike on 29 March against the Youth Wage Subsidy was a valiant attempt to build unity through mass struggle. Only a number of well-meaning single issue and small social movement type organisations supported it but not the mass working class forces with which to build the UF credibly.
NUMSA is of course on the right side of history in the battle against capitalism, the ANC government and its Tripartite Alliance class collaborators. But NUMSA was a full Alliance member until December 2013, supporting Zuma for president in 2009, even if it is now his most vocal critic.
Associated with NUMSA as the future workers party would be, the most effective way to demonstrate its commitment to creating a political alternative to the ANC and to earn the trust of the masses, is by the UF engaging the ANC in battle directly, distinguishing it sharply ideologically with a clear socialist programme and setting a definite timetable for the workers party launch to contest the 2016 local government and 2019 national elections. Building the UF through a combination of debating the Freedom Charter and mass action will allow for the dialectical interplay between theory and practice in the living struggle.
The decision to build the UF instead by direct engagement with working class communities is therefore absolutely correct. The tactical turn is already vindicated by the enthusiastic response of, for example, township residents to the Katlehong PDF/UF, in Gauteng, where problems ranging from child rape to electricity supply have been brought for resolution. Similar reports have been reported in some other provinces.
The Freedom Charter
As a contribution to the debate we will produce a thorough analysis of the Freedom Charter soon. For now, suffice it to say, we agree with NUMSA that the Freedom Charter is not a socialist programme. In its present form, it is incapable of solving the problems facing the working class and society. Seen as a document of the increasingly discredited ANC, it may even become an obstacle for unity rather than a path towards it.
From birth the Charter has been terrain contested between irreconcilable class forces – the working class and the aspirant black capitalist class. Both claimed the Charter as their programme, but for entirely opposite purposes – the former to preserve capitalism, the latter to overthrow it. Its ideological ambiguity, reinforced by the SACP’s Stalinist influence, disarmed the organised working class in particular, leading directly to the betrayals of the last twenty years.
It is therefore absolutely necessary that socialism should be central in the Freedom Charter debate. It will be necessary to subject the Charter to a thoroughgoing socialist overhaul. Unless the debate results in the development of a genuine socialist programme, the construction of the UF will fail. The path towards a mass workers party along the NUMSA route would thus be barred. Finding another would come at yet additional cost. Revolution and counter-revolution march in tandem with each other. Every failure of the working class to advance is seized by the reaction, to consolidate its own forces whilst destabilising those of the working class.
Is the Movement for Socialism Necessary?
We believe that the decision to inject the Freedom Charter debate into the process of building the UF, calls into question the necessity for the MfS. WASP has previously raised the question as to whether there is really a need for a MfS as well as the UF. As we asked then: which forces would be in the one and not in the other? This is how reality is turning out to be. All the parties to the envisaged MfS are already participating in the Political Discussion Forums through which the UF is being constructed. What role therefore will the MfS be playing that is different from the emerging UF?
It can surely not be the intervention to separate mental and manual labour with the MfS acting as an ideological debating society for the “vanguard”, whilst the UFs assemble the foot soldiers for mass action. Is the MfS therefore not redundant? It is highly unlikely to succeed in overcoming existing ideological and political differences. Ideological and political differences cannot simply be set aside ‘for the sake of unity’. This belittles their importance.
The United Democratic Front (UDF) of the 1980s took a federal organisational form “to unite a broadest possible spectrum of people across class and colour lines to bring together a maximum number of organisations of the people”. This meant reducing differences to the point that the UDF had an absolute “minimum programme”. As UDF historian Jeremy Seekings points out, it was guided by the dictum that “the pace of a column is not determined by its fittest and fastest soldier, but by the weakest”. The little these organisations had in common was much more important than their considerable differences. It is precisely this that ensured the UDF’s demise, taking its own life at the insistence of the ANC, in the political equivalent of assisted suicide.
Contrary to the popular view, the challenge facing the working class is not the divisions amongst the left. The problem lies in the disunity of the struggles of the working class, within all three main theatres of struggle – service delivery, education institutions and the workplace – and across them.
With the greatest respect to all the left organisations supportive of NUMSA, not one is unequivocally committed to the abolition of capitalism, has a clear revolutionary socialist programme or a mass base. With no firm roots in the mass of the working class, the disunity in the working class struggles cannot be overcome by uniting the Left.
The ideological cohesion and programmatic unity that a workers party would need, and which a genuine socialist programme alone could achieve, would not be unattainable through the “absolute minimum programme” UDF method. Rather the priority would be ensuring nothing stands in the way of left unity. To accommodate all parties, the first ‘obstacle’ to be sacrificed is likely to be socialism – either through jettisoning it altogether or through compromise. At best such left unity would result in a diluted pink rather than a red-blooded socialism programme.
The Marxist Workers Tendency, the DSM’s forerunners, pointed out in 1986 that: “The language of ‘unity’ and of course ‘united front’ is not the special property of Marxists. But invariably what [non-Marxists] have in mind is some form of institutional ‘united front’ or permanent [ideological and political] peace pact between leaders… Revolutionaries have no interest in a ‘united front’ of words and pretty resolutions which lull the masses to sleep, believing that ‘if everyone is united, everything must be fine.’”
The UF must not become an arena for a false unity of the left based on silence over real, and important, political differences, reflecting in the final analysis the vacillation and confusion of classes other than the working class.
Unprincipled unity
A UDF-style “lowest common denominator” approach to the MfS, seeking a permanent organisational agreement to avoid such a discussion in the name of ‘unity’, will ultimately pit itself against the genuine socialist programme the masses are striving towards. Agreement even on the Freedom Charter let alone a socialist programme would be impossible on this basis. We could end up with a situation where the tiny forces of the MfS tail would be wagging the dog of the masses behind the workers party. Instead of promoting unity the MfS would become a source of disunity.
The real lesson of the UDF is that the minimum programme meant the masses were indeed united, but behind the programme of another class! The UDF was a variant of the popular front. Normally these are fronts between working class and bourgeois formations which have betrayed the working class throughout history. The UDF was a front without the direct representatives of the bourgeoisie, but, as Trotsky described the 1930s Spanish equivalent, its shadow – the ANC. In pledging its support for the ANC’s Freedom Charter – on which the different classes allied in the liberation struggle placed different, conflicting interpretations – the UDF promoted the illusion that the ANC leadership was committed to carrying through what the masses saw as a programme for the socialist transformation of society. The masses were thus not prepared for the ANC’s subsequent betrayals.
The danger of the UDF’s popular front approach came to its full fruition in the Tripartite Alliance which formalised the subordination of the interests of the working class to those of the capitalist class. Following its unbanning, the ANC moved to the right revealing its capitalist class character – a process that began in the mid-1980s in secret discussions with the regime. This shift led to the abandonment of nationalisation – the disembowelment of the Freedom Charter – and its substitution with the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The closure of the RDP Office in 1996 and the imposition of the neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy followed in short order.
The great merit of the timing of NUMSA’s proposal to build the UF on a programme is that the programme can be developed and tested out in the everyday struggle. This has the potential to bring NUMSA’s approach much closer into line with that of the Bolsheviks. It will also enable the workers party to avoid the UDF’s pitfalls.
Perspectives for the WP
The struggles in the three theatres – workplaces, communities and education institutions – must be united. Through unity in action within each arena on its own platform, programme of action and leadership, all the working class battalions in each theatre could be united under the umbrella of a mass workers party on a socialist programme. WASP has proposed creating a Socialist Trade Union Network – a version of the united front tactic – to unite workers in struggle whether they are Cosatu, Nactu, or independent union members, or unorganised, to lay the groundwork for a new socialist trade union federation — now an unavoidable necessity. Similarly, service delivery protests must be united on a common programme and banner in a country-wide socialist civic. To promote unity in the financial and academic exclusions struggles, WASP has formed a youth wing – the Socialist Youth Movement.
The October Revolution and the methods of the Bolsheviks prove that a mass workers party on a socialist programme, with a revolutionary leadership steeled in the ideas of Marxism, is the historically proven method for the unification of the working class and socialist transformation of society. The UF and workers party must be built with this objective.
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The history of the tactic of the united front
The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) – the largest trade union on the African continent – resolved to withdraw support from the ANC at its December 2013 Special National Congress (SNC), setting in motion a process that could lead to the foundation of a workers party. This bold and historic decision was a direct consequence of the Marikana massacre – the ultimate proof that the ANC stands on the side of the bosses.
Unfortunately, by abstaining from taking a firm position on the 2014 elections, NUMSA left many workers inside and outside its ranks with a sense of uncertainty about its commitment to breaking with the ANC just five months after its historic congress seemed to point in that direction. Some NUMSA leaders even denied the SNC had called upon workers not to vote ANC. But within the Numsa rank-and file, there is a firm view that there is no turning back from a workers party.
However, uncertainty remains as the proposals of the NUMSA leadership are far from straightforward. There are plans to launch a Movement for Socialism (MfS), a United Front (UF) and then, out of these two, a Workers Party (WP), possibly in time for the 2016 local elections. Additionally, NUMSA locals have now been directed to establish Political Discussion Forums (PDFs) and given the task of building a UF.
The Workers and Socialist Party (WASP), and its affiliates, including the DSM, support and participate fully in the NUMSA PDF/UFs. NUMSA’s enormous social and political weight puts it in an extremely advantageous position to push forward the creation of a workers party. However this does not absolve us from pointing out what we believe are important flaws in NUMSA’s approach. These flaws flow from an incorrect understanding of the united front policy pursued by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution and by the Communist International afterwards, as well as a mistaken appraisal of the historical role of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the 1980s.
What is ‘united’ in a united front?
NUMSA comrades appear to have overlooked a critical aspect of the origins of the united front tactic: that it aims to achieve unity in action between mass organisations based on agreements to act on specific issues. The purpose of this is to expose political differences and allow the working class to judge the best programme, tactics and strategy to advance their class interests. Numsa’s approach is the very opposite: to achieve unity by setting differences aside.
The experience of the Russian Revolution and the early Comintern show that a Marxist approach to the united front entails using it as a tactic to win the mass of the working class over to a revolutionary socialist programme. This presupposes the existence of such a programme and a party to campaign for it. NUMSA’s approach, in contrast, is to assemble the forces for a United Front with neither a programme nor a party around whose aims, objectives, strategy and tactics it is trying to unite the working class. This potentially fatal defect in NUMSA’s conception of the UF needs to be remedied as a matter of urgency.
With the greatest respect to all the left organisations supportive of NUMSA, not one is unequivocally committed to the abolition of capitalism, has a clear revolutionary socialist programme or a mass base. The UF must not become an arena for a false unity of ‘the left’ based on silence over real, and important, political differences, which in the final analysis reflect the vacillation and confusion of classes other than the working class.
The Marxist Workers Tendency, predecessors of the DSM, operating within the ANC at that time, pointed out in 1986 that: “The language of ‘unity’ and of course ‘united front’ is not the special property of Marxists. But invariably what [non-Marxists] have in mind is some form of institutional ‘united front’ or permanent [ideological and political] peace pact between leaders… Revolutionaries have no interest in a ‘united front’ of words and pretty resolutions which lull the masses to sleep, believing that ‘if everyone is united, everything must be fine.’”
The PDFs could be given the task of drawing up such a programme for which we offer WASP’s manifesto as a contribution. But it is vital that the real lessons should be learned from history.
The United Front and the early Comintern
The Comintern was established to replace the Second International which collapsed after the overwhelming majority of its affiliates in Europe supported ‘their’ capitalist government’s decision to go to war against each other in 1914 for control of the world’s resources. By betraying a cardinal principle of working class internationalism, the leaders of the Second International agreed to allow the rival imperialist powers to send to the battlefield their workers – many of them members of the same international – to slaughter each other on their behalf. The collapse of the Second International was inevitable.
The October 1917 Russian Revolution, erupting in the midst of the war, was the response of the Russian working class and peasantry to three years of pointless bloody slaughter. It was the first time in history that the working class had successfully conquered power and overthrown capitalism. Inspired by this, the “greatest event in human history”, workers in a number of countries, especially in Europe, broke with the Second International determined to emulate the Bolsheviks’ example.
The Bolsheviks’ conception of the revolution in Russia had always been that it would be a prelude to a world socialist revolution. But the disorganisation of the international working class movement that followed the collapse of the Second International meant that the October Revolution took place in isolation. To break this isolation and spread the revolution, Communist Parties were rapidly established across Europe (the Bolsheviks had renamed themselves the Communist Party in 1918). These parties founded a new, Third, or Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. But collapse of the Second International did not automatically lead to the collapse of its affiliates and millions of workers still followed the parties that had betrayed them. The young Communist Parties were therefore unable to immediately win the allegiance of the majority of the working class.
As Trotsky explains in The Class, the Party and the Leadership, “The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions. Precisely for this reason the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution. But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilising the collapse of the old leading party.”
Immediately, the Comintern was faced with the necessity to develop a policy to unite with the workers in the parties of the collapsed Second International but on a revolutionary programme. This is the context in which the Comintern developed the tactic of the united front. The tactic entailed the Communist Parties proposing unity in action to other workers parties on specific questions, whilst retaining their separate programme and banner. Lenin summed-up the policy in the words: “March separately, strike together.” The aim of the united front tactic was not to rehabilitate the affiliates of the former Second International but to expose the treachery of their leaders and to win over their members to the programme of the Comintern’s affiliates, uniting the working class for the overthrow of capitalism.
The consequences of the failure to apply the united front policy demonstrated itself tragically in Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. The new ultra-left policies of the Comintern under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the bureaucratic counter-revolution, led to fatal mistakes and later conscious betrayals. Instead of entering advising the Germany Communist Party (CP) to enter into a united front with the Social Democratic Party (SDP) against the Nazis, the Comintern instructed the CP to attack and break up SDP meetings, split the working class and cleared the way for the conquest of power by Hitler without, as Trotsky explained, “a window pane being broken”.
Precedent set in Russian Revolution
The Comintern’s adoption of the united front policy drew upon the experience of the Bolsheviks which developed the tactic in the cauldron of the struggle for power. Before October, the Bolsheviks were in a minority in the leadership of the twenty million-strong soviets. They had to develop policies to unify the working class and to safeguard the revolution from the vacillation of the pro-capitalist leaders of the provisional government in the face of the threat of the counter-revolution. The success of the tactic was demonstrated when the revolution faced its moment of greatest danger in July 1917. Kornilov, general in the Cossack army, prepared to carry out a coup against the provisional government.
The Bolsheviks exposed the effective collusion of the pro-capitalist Menshevik and Social Revolutionaries (SR) parties, who as leaders of the provisional government made no preparations to prevent a coup, by proposing a united front against Kornilov. But the Menshevik and SR workers responded to the appeal and united with the Bolsheviks to defeat the attempted coup. This enhanced the authority of the Bolsheviks, enabling them to gain a majority in the soviets and to conquer power three months later relatively peacefully.
The success of the Russian Revolution was made possible by the attainment of the maximum unity of the working class drawing behind them the peasants. But that unity was not achieved by silence on political differences, but the exposure of those differences via a united front. Unity was achieved on the basis of the recognition by the masses of the superiority of the programme, strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks compared to those of its united front partners.
The birth of the UDF
In contrast, the UDF’s birth was sparked by the Apartheid regime’s introduction of the Tricameral Government – a ‘reform’ which gave Coloureds and Indians a vote for puppet chambers alongside the whites-only chamber in furtherance of its divide-and-rule strategy.
The UDF was a front in two senses: firstly to create the broadest unity of all anti-apartheid formations; secondly as a proxy for the banned ANC. At the UDF’s founding conference a delegate from the Border Region moved an amendment – 10.4 that became known as the ‘Border Clause’ – to the Founding Principles of the UDF that stated explicitly: “The Front shall not purport to replace the accredited liberation movements of the people”. Speeches at the founding conference bringing together 500 organisations committed the UDF to the ideals of the Freedom Charter – the ANC’s programme.
The UDF took a federal organisational form “to unite a broadest possible spectrum of people across class and colour lines to bring together a maximum number of organisations of the people”. This meant reducing differences to the point that the UDF had an absolute “minimum programme”. As UDF historian Jeremy Seekings points out, the UDF was guided by the dictum that “the pace of a column is not determined by its fittest and fastest soldier, but by the weakest”. The little these organisations had in common was much more important than their considerable differences.
As an ANC front, the UDF had no need for a separate programme. The abolition of apartheid was a sufficient basis for unity to clear the way for the coming to power of the ANC on the programme of the Freedom Charter. This is why, following the unbanning of the ANC, the UDF dissolved itself with virtually no resistance. Its task had been completed and the ANC took its place as expected.
Lessons of the UDF
Unity on the basis of a “minimum programme” is something entirely different from the Bolshevik conception of the united front as a tactic. The latter is an agreement on a specific question between mass organisations aimed at seeking support from the masses for a particular programme – for Marxists this means winning over the members of other parties to a revolutionary socialist programme by enabling workers of other parties to compare and contrast the programme of their parties to that of the Marxists. A UDF-style “lowest common denominator” united front, on the other hand, seeks a permanent organisational agreement to avoid such a discussion in the name of ‘unity’, ultimately perpetuating confusion. It would be impossible to agree even on the Freedom Charter let alone a red-blooded socialist programme on this basis.
The real lesson of the UDF in the 1980s is that in the absence of a programme developed from the experience of the mass struggle in concert with the socialist ideas in Cosatu, the masses were indeed united, but behind the programme of another class! In scientific socialist terms a ‘popular front’ is a front between working class and capitalist parties. Throughout history popular fronts have led to the betrayal of the working class. The UDF was a variant of the popular front – a front of working class formations without the direct representatives of the bourgeoisie, but with their shadow – the ANC. In pledging its support for the ANC’s Freedom Charter – on which the different classes allied in the liberation struggle placed different and conflicting interpretations – the UDF promoted the illusion that the ANC leadership was committed to carrying through what the masses saw as a programme for the socialist transformation of society. Consequently, the masses were not prepared for the subsequent betrayals of the ANC leadership.
The danger of the UDF’s popular front approach came to its full fruition in the creation of the Tripartite Alliance which formalised the subordination of the working class. Following its unbanning, the ANC moved to the right revealing its class character as a party of capital – a process that began in the mid-1980s in secret discussions with the regime. This shift manifested itself publicly with the abandonment of nationalisation – the disembowelment of the Freedom Charter – and its substitution with the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The closure of the RDP Office in 1996 and the imposition of the neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy followed in short order.
Perspectives for the WP
Marikana can be seen as a modern example of Trotsky’s “great historic shock”. Taking the parallel further, NUMSA has the potential to play the role of the Comintern by uniting not just the divided Cosatu membership but the working class as a whole around a socialist programme on the basis of which a workers party would be built. In this way it would be possible to win workers from the ANC, uniting them with non-Cosatu unions, unorganised workers, communities and the youth.
We believe Numsa’s ultimate objective is a workers party on a socialist programme and that the MfS, UF and PDFs form part of the roadmap towards it. However, unless the tasks are clearly posed, these can obstruct rather than act as a bridge towards such a party. Unfortunately instead of the question of the programme around which the working class must unite being primary, it is relegated to a secondary question. The Numsa leadership appears to believe that the programme will flow from the unity achieved in the MfS and the UF. “Unite first! The programme will follow!” the comrades appear to be saying. Yet the history of the Russian Revolution and the Comintern show that political unity achieved by utilising the united front as a tactic by a revolutionary party with socialist programme is the foundation, with organisational unity flowing from it.
NUMSA’s Section 77 strike against the Youth Wage Subsidy on 29 March was a valiant attempt to build unity through mass struggle. There was solid support for the strike amongst NUMSA members, but wider sections of the working class were not drawn into active support for it. Instead it attracted only a number of well-meaning single issue and small social movement type organisations – but not the mass working class forces with which to build a credible UF. In the circumstances Numsa resolved correctly to review the approach to the building of the UF.
Even if it were possible to move mechanically from the UF and MfS to the WP, it is not at all a certainty that the majority of the working class would automatically join it, despite the undoubted authority NUMSA has amongst organised workers. WASP pointed out to NUMSA in January that, “it is one thing to seize the moment in an organic struggle as the founders of WASP did in the course of the mineworkers’ strikes of 2012, and another to try and lay down a schedule for the class struggle.”
NUMSA is of course on the right side of history in the battle against capitalism, the ANC government and their class collaborators in the Tripartite Alliance. But NUMSA was a full part of that Alliance until December 2013, supporting Zuma for president in 2009, even if they have now become the their most vocal critic. Associated with NUMSA as the WP would be, it would have to earn the trust of the masses, winning their allegiance by demonstrating in practice the superiority of its programme strategy and tactics over those of other parties which will not just melt away with the birth of the WP.
WASP also indicated the enormous opportunity presented to the NUMSA leadership if they could skilfully link the recent platinum and metal strikes to the building of a workers party. Whilst the first priority was correctly wining the wage demand, unfortunately, the NUMSA leadership was brow-beaten by the capitalist media into towing the line that strikes are not ‘political’, keeping studiously quiet on the issue of the WP throughout that month long strike.
It is from such deeply-rooted and deeply-felt struggles that a workers party will emerge, provided there is a leadership capable of linking the immediate and specific demands of each and every strike, service delivery protest and youth struggle, to this general task faced by the working class as a whole.
Contrary to the popular view on the Left, the challenge facing the working class is not the divisions amongst them. The problem lies in the disunity of the working class. With most of the Left having no firm roots in the mass of the working class, its unity would make very little difference to mass workers’ unity. The unity of the Left under the banner of the MtS will not unite the working class.
The surge in service delivery protests, the increase in strikes and the now almost all-year round student protests against financial and academic exclusion and other issues, shows that there is no shortage of combativity. The problem is these struggles are united neither within each arena nor across them. The struggles of the three theatres – workplaces, communities and education institutions – must be organised and united. Workers unity in action can be achieved in action if within each arena a platform, programme of action and leadership is developed with all of them united under the umbrella of a mass workers party on a socialist programme.
WASP has raised the idea of creating a Socialist Trade Union Network – a version of the united front tactic – to unite workers in struggle whether they are Cosatu members, Nactu members, members of independent unions or unorganised. Similarly, the service delivery protests must be united on a common programme and under the common banner of a nationwide socialist civic. So too the regular youth protests over financial and academic exclusions. A united front of organisations leading these three theatres of mass struggle is required. But in any united front, forged in working class struggle, it is inescapable that a workers party with a revolutionary leadership is a necessity to express the common interests of the working class: the struggle for socialism.